Coal sparks interest in council

PALMER — The controversy that has recently divided the Moose Creek/Soapstone Community Council is about a lot of things in general and one in particular — coal mining.

Until recently, the community council has been a relatively small group of neighbors who met infrequently. Usually, attendance maxed out at a few dozen.

But the last three meetings have attracted hundreds of people, enough to require larger meeting spaces.

Marnie Weiland, one of the people running for a seat on the council’s board of directors, said she would have gotten involved sooner if she’d known what the council was doing.

She said she saw signs advertising the meetings, but they were advertised as potlucks and a community council potluck wasn’t high on her priorities, she said.

“To go to a social event is usually something we like to plan,” Weiland said.

Then she found out that the council was working on a comprehensive plan. That plan included anti-coal mining sentiments, Weiland said, which she doesn’t share.

She said she doesn’t think the council did enough to ask for her opinion.

“You can’t speak for someone if you haven’t asked,” Weiland said.

The sitting council president, Jennifer Charvet, has said previously that the council did a lot of things to reach out to the community, such as advertising meetings in the newspaper and posting signs in the community.

Attendance increased when they started having food at the meetings, Charvet said. But it was still a sleepy little council that she and her colleagues figured just wasn’t interesting for their neighbors.

Opposition showed up in force at the last meeting to discuss the comprehensive plan and managed to get the plan tossed out.

As for how much of that has to do with coal, Charvet and another council member noted it did mention coal.

But Weiland and another member of the opposition, Janette Goss, said the plan gives coal more than a mere mention; the word is in the plan more than 140 times.

Without the coal, she said, “it’s not even something that would necessarily be very helpful to the community anyway.”

Weiland said that in another vein she moved to where she lives to get away from rules and regulations, to live the way she wants to live. For someone to then come in with a set of rules just rubs her the wrong way.

Charvet has said the plan was really just some suggestions and that the council can’t enforce anything it recommends.

But Goss said she didn’t believe the council would stop with a plan and would move next to implement a set of rules that are enforceable.

She and Weiland both said they think that mining wouldn’t adversely affect their property. They say coal rolls through the Valley frequently in train cars headed from Healy to Seward and no one complains.

Goss said she hopes that when board elections are held this month a new board will be seated and the council will settle back down.

“People are divided and it’s ugly and we don’t want that,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.